This past winter, the Association of World Citizens awarded a retired Colonel of the Russian Army Stanislav Petrov at the U.N. headquarters.

On Sunday, September 25, 1983, the fate of the world was entirely in the hands of that officer from the town of Friazino near Moscow.

That day, the 44-year-old Lieutenant Colonel just reported for night-shift duty to the “Serpuhov-15” command center of the Soviet missile defense system.

Near midnight, the command post received notification of an attack from the United States. Automatic satellite control systems that were deployed a year prior clearly indicated that the U.S. launched five ballistic Minuteman missiles, each carrying ten nuclear warheads.

At that time, the Cold War was at its peak. Some three weeks before the incident, the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean Boeing 747.

According to his instructions, Officer Petrov was to notify U.S.S.R. Leaders immediately. They would issue directives for a nuclear counterstrike.

The Lieutenant Colonel, however, decided to analyze the situation – the launches were made from the same location, and there were only a few ICBMs. Relying on common sense – five rockets is not enough for a first attack in a nuclear war – Officer Petrov ignored the threat and told his subordinates that it was a computer malfunction. Petrov went against all instructions and announced that the alarm was false.

Investigations indeed confirmed that the sensors on the missile defense satellite picked up sunlight that was reflected by cirrus clouds. The scientists had to modify the sensors.

The world did not know that it had been saved until much later. Documents describing the events were declassified only in 1998.

During the award ceremony, the president of the Association of World Citizens Douglas Mattern presented the 67-year-old Officer Petrov with a crystal trophy – a hand holding the globe – with an engraving that read “To the man who prevented nuclear war.”

“We are eternally indebted to the Colonel… In a critical moment of history he exemplified foresight and composure” Mattern said.

Speaking at the ceremony, Stanislav Petrov said: “I am thankful that you esteem so highly what I did. I am a little uncomfortable with calling it heroic. I was only doing my duty. It was a joint effort – I could not have done anything if not for the people that I was working with that night.”

As Petrov said, he was neither rewarded nor punished for his initiative in the U.S.S.R. “Neither happened. At first everyone was telling me that my service to the country will definitely be honored. Later, however, the government appointed a committee to investigate the incident, and it found many shortcomings in what I did. Some people on that committee were responsible for the failure of the defense satellite,”  Petrov remembered.

Officer Petrov’s visit to the United States was organized by a Dutch production company that is currently doing a documentary about him.

Interestingly, the case of Vladislav Petrov is not unique. There are instances of other Soviet soldiers who prevented nuclear war.

In 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, an American destroyer was dropping depth bombs over a Russian submarine, trying to make it come up. The Americans did not know that the Russians were carrying a torpedo with a nuclear warhead.

The Soviet submarine was authorized to launch the missile only if the three commanding officers agreed. As the depth bombs were exploding around them, the commanders argued whether to launch the torpedo and sink the American ship. Two of the officers voted for, and one against. The dissenting officer’s last name was Arhipov. No more information about that commander is available.